Lifecasting

TrendCentral: Not since the ‘90s JenniCam craze has a personal webcam attracted so much attention. Justin.tv is the live videostream of Justin Kan, a 23-year-old web entrepreneur in San Francisco who has coined the term “lifecasting” with his no holds barred self-documentation approach. Kan has attached a camera to his head that delivers a 24/7 stream of his life from his point of view. (The only time he takes the camera off is when he goes to sleep at night, which leads viewers to wonder what will happen when the opportunity to get intimate with someone presents itself.) Not only do tens of thousands of viewers reportedly “tune in” to see what antics Kan and his buddies are up to, but Kan is also trying to keep his fans by interacting with them through hundreds of e-mails and 21 chat rooms each day. Until recently, he even took calls on his cellphone!
With a business model based on product placement, Justin.tv already has sponsorship from Zipcar rentals and Bawls energy drink, who are given prominent airtime in the form of posters on the walls of the site’s headquarters. Kan’s ultimate goal is to build the site into a network of hundreds of lifecasters, each with their own channel—making it yet another competitor to traditional television.
Justin.TV